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The Unity of Fitness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marshall Abrams
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Abstract

It has been argued that biological fitness cannot be defined as expected number of offspring in all contexts. Some authors argue that fitness therefore merely satisfies a common schema or that no unified mathematical characterization of fitness is possible. I argue that comparative fitness must be relativized to an evolutionary effect; thus relativized, fitness can be given a unitary mathematical characterization in terms of probabilities of producing offspring and other effects. Such fitnesses will sometimes be defined in terms of probabilities of effects occurring over the long term, but these probabilities nevertheless concern effects occurring over the short term.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 2009 , pp. 750 - 761
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am grateful for helpful comments and discussion from audience members at the 2008 PSA meeting and at the 2007 meeting of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology.

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